"Bittersweet and spot on, Beyond Fairy Tales, Poems in Concrete and Flesh are about those moments in life when the fairy dust of happy-ever-after has blown away...leaving the reader thinking about the deceit in our own dreams."—2014 Piedmont Laureate Carrie Knowles, author of Ashoan’s Rug and Lillian’s Garden

"Waving her magic wand, Maureen A. Sherbondy transforms classic fairy tales into contemporary fables: Goldilocks becomes a senile woman who sleeps on other residents' beds in a nursing home, Rapunzel loses her hair to chemotherapy, and the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe abandons her children. The poems push beyond the margins of fairy tales into modern mutations of mystery, betrayal, and loss. Despite multiple personae and shape-shifting, the unique voice of the poet remains constant."—Beth Copeland, author of Transcendental Telemarketer

“With humor and raw, dark beauty, Maureen Sherbondy shows us a world of broken, aging survivors. Her characters dance on the edge of loneliness and longing; they inhabit lost dreams where happily-ever-afters have twisted into financial, emotional, and physical hardship. And yet, one word rises out of this haunting, unforgettable collection of poems: acceptance.”—Barbara Claypole White, author of The In-Between Hour

Beyond Fairy Tales, Poems in Concrete and Flesh is a full-length poetry collection about what happens after the fairy tales end.

Maureen A. Sherbondy's books are After the Fairy Tale, Praying at Coffee Shops, The Slow Vanishing, Scar Girl, Weary Blues, The Year of Dead Fathers, and Eulogy for an Imperfect Man. She teaches at Alamance Community College.